Whole Foods’ Values Campaign Shows Some Progress

Several weeks into its first national brand marketing campaign to dispel its “Whole Paycheck” image, Whole Foods Markets has seen its Ad Awareness and Purchase Consideration scores tick up modestly, although Value perception has remained in negative territory.

While Whole Foods’ ad awareness rose about 3 points during the first few weeks of its campaign, value perception remained mostly negative and climbed no higher than where it had been as recently as September, and still below its peak 2014 levels in February. Another challenge: competitor Trader Joe’s Ad Awareness spiked shortly after the Whole Foods campaign, possibly blunting some of the intended message.

On the other hand, Whole Foods’ purchase consideration score has also increased modestly: 16% of consumers currently say that they would consider the brand the next time they are in the market for groceries. That compares to 14% prior to the campaign. Comparatively, Trader Joe’s current purchase consideration is 21%.

Since the Partners & Spade campaign broke on Monday, October 20th touting both its past theme, “America’s Healthiest Grocery Store,” and a new “Values matters” one, ad awareness rose from 7% of consumers recalling an ad from the chain in the past two weeks to peaking at 10% by November 11th. Those levels have since subsided to 8%.

The road to improving value perception has proven a lot tougher so far, even though they’ve been cutting prices on fresh produce too.

Value scores can range from 100 to -100 and is compiled by subtracting negative feedback from positive. A zero score means equal positive and negative feedback.

On October 19th, the day before the campaign broke, Whole Foods’ Value score was -6.

The score made it as high as -3 five days later, and then to -4, where it has remained ever since.

Comparatively, Whole Foods’ Value score was -2 for much of September, and it made it as far as a positive score of 1 back in early February.

Whole Foods’ main competitor, Trader Joe’s, currently has a Value score of 14.